


We Might Fall

by leopoldjamesfitz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9765521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopoldjamesfitz/pseuds/leopoldjamesfitz
Summary: Post 4x14 - S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heads have all been replicated and replaced - with the exception of Fitz and Simmons. When they put their minds together, they can do almost anything, so naturally finding the location was a simple fix. Getting in and saving their team, as always, has it's own kinks. Especially when someone else seems to have his own agenda.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a branch of the TFSN Coda Challenge (that, to my knowledge, hasn't even been posted up yet but I'm a Night Owl and I'm getting an early start) from tonight's episode, "The Man Behind The Shield" (4x14). It's purely skeptical, leading off a little bit ahead of where the episode ended off and will probably not be canon. At all. Not even if I tried.

After searching nearly a day and a half, both of them just seconds away from being concussed, she was almost relieved to see the darkened, apparently abandoned submarine off in the distance. By the way Fitz deflated at the site, she assumed he was too. “They’ve got to be in there somewhere,” he said to her and she nodded quietly. Of course, they did. Everything they’d done today, going rogue on S.H.I.E.L.D. while the base was inhabited with LMD’s, it couldn’t be all for naught.

“We stick together,” she commanded, turning toward him. There was a ferocity in her gaze that would have taken him aback if he hadn’t known Jemma Simmons better than she knew herself. “I’m tired of our friends being taken from us, I can’t let that happen with us.”

He nodded quietly, rubbing a slow circle against her back as they stood there, and he turned his gaze up toward the submarine, his heart heavy. They had no one but each other. Abandoning the S.H.I.E.L.D. base didn’t come with a handful of armed officers who could protect them now. He kept thinking back to when they’d joined the bus, how his hands had always fumbled with the gun but now it felt like normal weight in his hands. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his life to be. Certainly not spending it tucked away just south of the location they’d thought their team to be with just their brains and ICERs between them.

“Fitz,” she reached down and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. He squeezed back. “We have to go… we can’t waste much more time.”

Dropping her hand, he nodded and reached for his own ICER and nodded as she grabbed hers, the two of them moving to enter the only visible entrance of the submarine. It was so much darker than he’d imagined inside, and with only the low light from the moon overhead, the two of them crept quietly through the area.

Every noise sent shivers down his spine and he might’ve fled then if not for her steady presence at his side. He turned his head toward her and silently jutted his head in the direction he intended to go and she nodded quietly as they crept. Everything suddenly became the sound of machines humming as they crept through a long hallway, blank except for a series of doorways.

The darkness enveloped them as they kept on, a device that Fitz had installed into his (heavily modified) Apple Watch, beeping when they came closer to a potential source. He glanced over at her and she nodded quietly, assenting. He pressed his thumb on it to acknowledge the sound and to not alert anyone they were coming, and then stepped forward. The device beeped again, louder and continued. He dropped his gun slightly, opening the door with his free hand.

The two of them walked into the room and it grew light suddenly, and their attention turned toward the line of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, their missing team, hooked up to a large platform. “Jemma,” Fitz stepped forward, tucking his gun away into the holster at his side. “We did it.” Fitz looked back at her, his hands clasped together and the look of happiness sliding from his face instantly as he was met with the muzzle of her ICER. “Jem…” he struggled for words, looking between her and the weapon. “Jemma, what are you doing?”

Her hand shook a little and she let out a slow breath, her eyes diverting away from him and toward the gun. “I’m… I’m sorry Fitz… I don’t…” She pulled the trigger and watched him crumple on the ground, falling forward. She caught herself, hands on her knees as she inhaled and exhaled at a rapid pace. Footsteps behind her alerted her that someone was near and she shot up, holding the gun toward the sound.

The man who approached was unfamiliar, yet familiar at the same time. “Good job,” he commended her, his gaze turning toward Fitz, sprawled out on the ground with an ICER bullet in his chest.

“I didn’t want to do that,” she told him quietly, the gun still in her direction. She moved with his movements. “Why did I do that?” Her panic levels rose slowly and he raised an eyebrow as she looked down at Fitz, biting back a sob. “I love him… I don’t want to hurt him.”

“I know you do,” the man chuckled lowly. “See, that is why we used you. He would be suspicious of everyone and anyone else – even Daisy and Mack, who I’m beginning to see are two of his closest friends. But you?” He took a step forward, nudging the gun down and she froze as her arms willingly fell down. “You’re just about the only person in this whole world he trusts completely.”

Jemma’s chest deflated and she opened her mouth to speak to him, but stopped and watched as he held up a device, the world growing dark when he pressed a button. Behind him, Holden and AIDA crept closely. “She did good,” the man said as he turned toward the two of them. “One of your best works yet, Holden, she got us exactly what we needed.”

“I don’t think Fitz will be willing to work with us, now that we’ve captured his entire team and Agent Simmons,” AIDA told him, looking down at the unconscious body of Fitz.

The man turned fully toward his allies, tucking the device in his shirt pocket as he crossed his arms over his chest, taking a few short steps toward them. “Oh, that’s not going to be a worry.” He chastised her for even thinking it. He’d be able to crack the young agent, he’d done it before after all. “If not for his life, but for theirs.” He added, gesturing to the wall of agents behind them, all in similar simulations. “We’ve got him right where I… where _we_ wanted him, dear AIDA.”

If the android had anything to say about it further, she kept it to herself and he silently thanked her for that. "Now," he clapped his hands together, moving over to crouch beside the unconscious body on the floor of the submarine. "Help me get him up, and we'll hook him up to one of your machines, Holden." Radcliffe hesitated but moved to hook his arm under Fitz's armpit as his companion replicated the action. "After all, we don't need his cooperation, we need his  _brain_ \- and that's one thing he got from me."


End file.
